Carbon

Carbon is one of the most common elements, it can assume myriad shapes, and it is one of the few elements to have a song devoted to one of its shapes

Our next element is the amazing carbon (two forms, diamond and graphite, are pictured at right, courtesy of Rob Lavinsky/Wikipedia), which forms more compounds than any other element. Besides making up much of you and me, it also comprises significant proportions of every known living thing on earth, from viruses, existing at the very boundaries of what is life, and that vast array of "microbes" (archaea, bacteria, and the protists, most of which we have not yet described), to fungi, plants, animals and even those most advanced and ethereal of all living beings, the birds. Carbon is such an advanced element that it is the only element that can admire itself, as Marilyn Monroe ably demonstrated when she sang her song, "Diamonds are a girl's best friend."

Our favorite chemistry professor, the man with the crazy hair, just uploaded a new video about carbon. In it, he takes us on a guided tour through the stuff of life:

All those alternate forms of carbon that the professor mentioned in this video are known as allotropes. Allotropes are substances that have the same atomic composition (carbon, in this case) but the individual components, the carbon atoms themselves, are arranged differently. Because carbon has four unpaired electrons in its outer-most electron shell, it forms four bonds. For this reason, it has a wide variety of arrangements that it can adopt which changes its structural shape -- made apparent by the suitcase full of models that you saw in the video. (Our professor also confirmed our long-held-but-unstated suspicion that traveling chemists' suitcases are not filled with clothes, but are instead filled with carbon allotrope models.)

Now that I've shown you that little educational piece about carbon, this video is for you kids lurking at the back of the classroom:

Every week, Guardian science blogger GrrlScientist introduces a new chemical element, with help from The Periodic Table of Videos – a collaboration between the University of Nottingham's School of Chemistry and video journalist Brady Haran